Quayside Blues

Wide, white moonlight
on shy, tires eyes
that hardly see the bay's
light footpath, straight
to the horizon. The sparkle
of this bright, intense
loneliness is not
in the sea's abandon;
the indigenous spirits
just ride the slow waves.
It is not in the streetlamps
extinguishing along the
boulevard nor in the
purity of this night,
clear, cold and surgical.
It's on the esplanade
that runs all the way
to the harbour:
behind kind eyes a lost face
nods her sad goodbyes
in a whiff of perfume –
the sound of water
lapping the stone quay.